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Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Tabula Rosa Blog of 5/20/2015 - The Guise Of Facebook's Internet.org

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Many
very large organizations are looking to control a large part of the
Internet. Part of this is the extreme pressure to repeal Net Neutrality.
Other organizations are looking for more creative ways to do this.

Facebook
has two initiatives they are currently touting. The first I discussed
in my blog of 5/17. The second is the subject of this blog about
Facebook's other project, Internet.org. As much as it has esoteric
guises, it is really another attempt to grow influence and control.

I leave it to you, the reader to decide.
============================================Good Netiquette And A Green Internet To All!

Facebook's Internet.org project,
which offers people from developing countries free mobile access to selected
websites, has been pitched as a philanthropic initiative to connect two thirds
of the world who don’t yet have Internet access. We completely agree that the
global digital divide should be closed. However, we question whether this is
the right way to do it. As we and others have noted, there's a real risk that
the few websites that Facebook and its partners select for Internet.org
(including, of course, Facebook itself) could end up becoming a ghetto for poor
users instead of a stepping stone to the larger Internet.

Mark Zuckerberg's announcement of
the expansion of the Internet.org platform earlier
this month was aimed to address some of these criticisms. In a nutshell, the
changes would allow any website operator to submit their site for inclusion in
Internet.org, provided that it meets the program's guidelines. Those guidelines are neutral as to the
subject matter of the site, but do impose certain technical limitations
intended to ensure that sites do not overly burden the carrier's network, and
that they will work on both inexpensive feature
phones and modern smartphones.

Compliance with
the guidelines will be reviewed by the Internet.org team, which may then make
the site available for Internet.org users to access for free, by routing the
communication through the Internet.org proxy server. That proxy server allows
the sites to be “zero rated” by participating mobile phone operators; allows
the automatic stripping out of content that violates the guidelines—such as
images greater than 1Mb in size, videos, VoIP calls, Flash and Java applets and
even JavaScript; and inserts an interstitial warning if a user attempts to
leave Internet.org's zero-rated portion of the Internet, so as to prevent users
from accidentally being billed for data charges they may not be able to afford
and didn't mean to incur.

We agree that
some Internet access is better than none, and if that is what Internet.org
actually provided—for example, through a uniformly rate-limited or data-capped
free service—then it would have our full support. But it doesn't. Instead, it
continues to impose conditions and restraints that not only make it something
less than a true Internet service, but also endanger people's privacy and security.

That's because
the technical structure of Internet.org prevents some users from accessing
services over encrypted HTTPS connections. As we mentioned above, a critical
component of Internet.org is its proxy server, which traffic must pass through
for the zero-rating and the interstitial warning to work correctly. Some
devices, like Android phones running Internet.org's app, have the technical
ability to make encrypted HTTPS connections through the proxy server without
becoming vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks or exposing any data (beyond
the domain being requested) to Facebook. Internet.org's Android app can also
automatically bring up the interstitial warning directly on the phone by using
the app to analyze links (as opposed to Facebook serving the warning via its
proxy server).

But most
inexpensive feature phones that can't run an Android app don't support
phone-based warnings or this sort of proxying of HTTPS connections. For these
phones, traffic must pass through Internet.org's proxy unencrypted, which means
that any information users send or receive from Internet.org's services could
be read by local police or national intelligence agencies and expose its users
to harm. While Facebook is working to solve this problem, it's extremely
difficult from a technical perspective, with no obvious solution.

Even if
Facebook were able to figure out a way to support HTTPS proxying on feature
phones, its position as Internet gatekeepers remains more broadly troublesome.
By setting themselves up as gatekeepers for free access to (portions of) the
global Internet, Facebook and its partners have issued an open invitation for
governments and special interest groups to lobby, cajole or threaten them to
withhold particular content from their service. In other words, Internet.org
would be much easier to censor than a true global Internet.

While we
applaud Facebook's efforts to encourage more websites to provide support for
low-end feature phones by stripping out “heavy” content, we would like to see
Internet.org try harder to achieve its very worthy objective of connecting the
remaining two thirds of the world to the Internet. We have confidence that it
would be possible to provide a limited free Internet access service that is
secure, and that doesn't rely on Facebook and its partners to maintain a
central list of approved sites. Until then, Internet.org will not be living up
to its promise, or its name.

In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great
assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the
premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve,
Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge
Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” will be published soon
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If you would like to listen
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contributor to numerous blogs and publications.

Lastly, I
am the founder and president of Tabula
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product information for virtually anyone.

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